Neural interface systems are typically implantable devices that are placed into biological tissue (e.g., brain or other neural tissue) and have the ability through electrode sites, to record electrical signals from and/or electrically stimulate the tissue. Such neural interface systems may be used, for example, in treatment of neurological and psychiatric disorders. For instance, deep brain stimulation devices may provide controllable electrical stimulation of selected regions of neural tissue through strategic positioning and activation of electrode sites.
A neural interface system including a high-density array of electrode sites would be useful in many applications for exceptional control, but utilizing current conventional technology, including more electrode sites typically means a significant increase in thickness and overall size of the implantable device. Generally speaking, the larger the implantable device is, the more damage to tissue (e.g., cortical blood vessels and local tissue in and around the region of interest) the devices inflicts during implantation into the tissue. Furthermore, larger devices typically experience increased incidence of tissue encapsulation, as a result of foreign body response, thereby leading to decreased electrode sensitivity.
Thus, there is a need in the neural interface field to create a new and useful neural interface system that ameliorates or eliminates the issues created by larger devices. High-channel count neural interfaces especially tend to be larger given the cost of decreasing the feature size during fabrication. This invention provides such a neural interface system, which is described in detail below in its preferred embodiments with reference to the appended drawings.